James Swallow - Nemesis

disagree with the young man and he changed the subject. “We think we have an

identity for the victim. Documents found near the scene, papers and the like. Name

was Jaared Norte. A lighter drivesman.”

“You think,” echoed Yosef. “You’re not sure?”

Skelta held up the barrier line for the reeve to step under, and they walked on,

into the crime scene proper. “Haven’t been able to make a positive match yet, sir,” he

went on. “Clinicians are on the way to check for dentition and blood-trace.” The

jager coughed, self-consciously. “He… doesn’t have a face, sir. And we found some

loose teeth… But we’re not sure they were, uh, his.”

Yosef took that in without comment. “Go on.”

“Norte’s foreman has been interviewed. Apparently, Norte clocked off at the

usual time last night, heading home to his wife and son. He never arrived.”

“The wife report it, did she?”

Skelta shook his head. “No, sir. They had some trouble, apparently. Their

marriage contract was a few months from expiration, and it was causing friction. She

probably thought he was out drinking up his pay.”

“This from the foreman?”

The jager nodded. “Sent a mobile to their house to confirm his take on things.

Waiting on a word.”

16

“Was Norte drank when he was killed?”

This time, Skelta couldn’t stop himself from shuddering. “For his sake, I hope so.

Would have been a blessing for the poor bastard.”

Yosef sensed the fear in the other man’s words. Murder was not an uncommon

crime on Iesta Veracrux; they were a relatively prosperous world that was built on

the industry of wine, after all, and men who drank—or who coveted money—were

often given to mistakes that led to bloodletting. The reeve had seen many deaths,

some brutal, many of them sordid, each in their own way tragic; but all of them he

had understood. Yosef knew crime for what it was—a weakness of self—and he

knew the triggers that would bring that flaw to light, jealousy, madness, sorrow…

But fear was the worst.

And there was much fear on Iesta Veracrux these days. Here out in the ranges of

the Ultima Segmentum, across the span of the galaxy from the Throne of Terra, the

planet and its people felt distant and unprotected while wars were being fought, lines

of battle drawn over maps their home world was too insignificant to grace. The

Emperor and his council seemed so far away, and the oncoming storm of the

insurrection churning sightless and unseen in the nearby stars laid a pall of creeping

apprehension over everything. In every shadowed corner, people saw the ghosts of

the unknown.

They were afraid; and people who were afraid easily became people who were

angry, directing their terror outwards against any slight, real or imagined. Today’s

killing was only the newest of many that had rolled across Iesta Veracrux in recent

months; murders spawned from trivialities, suicides, panicked attacks on illusory

threats. While life went on as it ever did, beneath the surface there lay a black mood

infecting the whole populace, even as they pretended it did not exist. Had Jaared

Norte become a victim of this as well? Yosef thought it likely.

They moved around a tall corner of containers and into a small courtyard formed

by lines of crates. Overhead, another cargo ballute drifted slowly past, for a moment

casting a broad oval shadow across the proceedings. A handful of other jagers were

at work conducting fingertip sweeps of the location, a couple from the documentary

office working complex forensic picters and sense-nets, another talking into a bulky

wireless with a tall whip antenna. Skelta exchanged looks with one of the docos, and

she gave him a rueful nod in return. Behind them all, there was a narrow but high

storage shed with its doors splayed wide open. The reeve immediately spotted the

patches of brown staining the metal doors.

He frowned, looking around at the identical rust-coloured greatcoats and peaked

caps of the Sentine officers. “The Arbites are inside?” Yosef nodded towards the

shed.

Skelta gave a derisive sniff. “The Arbites are not here, sir. Called it in, as per the

regulations. Lord Marshal’s office was unavailable. Asked to be kept informed,

though.”

“I’ll bet they did.” Yosef grimaced. For all the grand words and high ideals

spouted by the Adeptus Arbites, at least on Iesta Veracrux that particular branch of

the Adeptus Terra was less interested in the policing of the planet than they were in

being seen to be interested in it. The officers of the Sentine had been the lawmen and

wardens of the Iestan system since the days of the colony’s founding in the First

17

Establishment, and the installation of an office of the Arbites here during the Great

Crusade had done little to change that state of affairs. The Lord Marshal and his staff

seemed more than happy to remain in their imposing tower and allow the Sentine to

function as they always had, handling all the “local” matters. Quite what the Arbites

considered to be other than local had never, in twenty years of service, been made

clear to Yosef Sabrat. The politics of the whole thing seemed to orbit at a level far

beyond the reeve’s understanding.

He glanced at Skelta. “Do you have a read on the murder weapon?”

Skelta glanced at the doco officer again, as if asking permission. “Not exactly.

Bladed weapon, probably. For starters. There might have been, uh, other tools used.”

What little colour there was on the jager’s face seemed to ebb away and he

swallowed hard.

Yosef stopped on the threshold of the shed. A slaughterhouse stink of blood and

faeces hit him hard and his nostrils twitched. “Witnesses?” he added.

Skelta pointed upwards, towards a spotlight tower. “There are security imagers

on the lighting stands, but they didn’t get anything. Angle was too shallow for the

optics to pick up a likeness.”

The reeve filed that information away; whoever had made the kill knew the

layout of the airdocks, then. “Canvass every other imager in a half-kilometre radius,

pull the memory coils and have some of the recruits sift them. We might get lucky.”

He took a long inhalation, careful to breathe through his mouth. “Let’s see this,

then.”

He went in, and Skelta hesitantly followed a few steps behind. Inside, the shed

was gloomy, lit only by patches of watery sunshine coming in by degrees through

low windows and the hard-edged glares of humming portable arc lamps. On splayed

tripod legs, a quad of gangly field emitters stood at the corners of an ill-defined

square, a faint yellow glow connecting each to its neighbours. The permeable energy

membrane allowed objects above a certain mass or kinetic energy to pass through

unhindered, but kept particulates and other micro-scale matter in situ to aid with onsite

forensics.

Yosef’s brow creased in a frown as he approached the field; the area of open,

shadowed floor between the emitters seemed at first glance to be empty. He stepped

through the barrier and the stench in the air intensified. Glancing over his shoulder he

saw that Skelta had not followed him through, instead remaining outside the line at